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Excerpt: ...shot him also in the head, and he abandoned his body. 'Thus was all correct. There was neither heat, nor haste, nor abuse in the matter from end to end. There remained alive not one man or woman of their mother's kin which had oppressed them. Of the other villagers of Pishapur, who had taken no part in the persecutions, not one was slain. Indeed, the villagers sent them food on the housetop for those three days while they waited for the police who would not dispatch that army. 'Listen again I know that Attar Singh and Rutton Singh omitted no ceremony of the purifications, and when all was done Baynes Sahib's revolver was thrown down from the housetop, together with three rupees twelve annas; and order was given for its return by post.' 'And what befell the two younger brethren who were not in the service?' the Havildar-Major asked. 'Doubtless they too are dead, but since they were not in the Regiment their honour concerns themselves only. So far as we were touched, see how correctly we came out of the matter I think the King should be told; for where could you match such a tale except among us Sikhs? Sri wah guru ji ki Khalsa Sri wah guru ji ki futteh ' said the Regimental Chaplain. 'Would three rupees twelve annas pay for the used cartridges?' said the Havildar-Major. 'Attar Singh knew the just price. All Baynes Sahib's gear was in his charge. They expended one tin box of fifty cartouches, lacking two which were returned. As I said--as I say--the arrangement was made not with heat nor blasphemies as a Mussulman would have made it; not with cries nor caperings as an idolater would have made it; but conformably to the ritual and doctrine of the Sikhs. Hear you "Though hundreds of amusements are offered to a child it cannot live without milk. If a man be divorced from his soul and his soul's desire he certainly will not stop to play upon the road, but he will make haste with his pilgrimage." That is written. I rejoice in my disciples.' 'True ...… (more)
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Miss Fowler engaged her on this recommendation, and to her surprise, for she had had experience
Published in 1917, this book contains both poems and short stories, with the poems often based on the same subject matter as the preceding story. It starts with a single science fiction story and there is also a ghost story, but most of the other stories are about either army life in general and World War I in particular, or life in the British countryside. Two of the stories are linked to Kipling's novel Stalky and Co. which I read as a teenager but remember noting about; Regulus is a school story while the other is about young army officers getting into trouble for 'ragging' each other.
More than one of the rural stories features flooding, including the 1914 story "Friendly Brook", and it's interesting that over 100 years ago people already knew that tarmac changed the way that the land drains and can cause flooding.
'The brook's got up a piece since morning,' said Jabez. 'Sounds like's if she was over Wickenden's door-stones.'
Jesse listened, too. There was a growl in the brook's roar as though she worried something hard.
'Yes. She's over Wickenden's door-stones,' he replied. 'Now she'll flood acrost Alder Bay an' that'll ease her.'
'She won't ease Jim Wickenden's hay none if she do,' Jabez grunted. 'I told Jim he'd set that liddle hay-stack o' his too low down in the medder. I told him so when he was drawin' the bottom for it.'
'I told him so, too,' said Jesse. 'I told him 'fore ever you did. I told him when the County Council tarred the roads up along.' He pointed up-hill, where unseen automobiles and road-engines droned past continually. 'A tarred road, she shoots every drop o' water into a valley same's a slate roof. 'Tisn't as 'twas in the old days, when the waters soaked in and soaked out in the way o' nature. It rooshes off they tarred roads all of a lump, and naturally every drop is bound to descend into the valley. And there's tar roads both two sides this valley for ten mile. That's what I told Jim Wickenden when they tarred the roads last year. But he's a valley-man. He don't hardly ever journey up-hill.'
This is a really diverse collection, and the only story I found hard-going was "The Horse Marines" which is an explanation of why a man's car is given 2 new tyres after his chauffeur gives a lift to some soldiers and they get embroiled in army manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain. Maybe there was just too must early 20th century British army slang for me to cope with.
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| Fic Gen Kipling |